Nov. 6, 1967: Members of the Grateful Dead and friends leave court after being rebooked. They were arrested after more than a pounds of marijuana was found at 710 Ashbury St.

Nov. 6, 1967: Members of the Grateful Dead and friends leave court after being rebooked. They were arrested after more than a pounds of marijuana was found at 710 Ashbury St.

Photo: Jerry Telfer / The Chronicle

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Nov. 6, 1967: Grateful Dead band manager Rock Scully talks to reporters after his rebooking. Scully faced additional charges because he was renting the house.

Nov. 6, 1967: Grateful Dead band manager Rock Scully talks to reporters after his rebooking. Scully faced additional charges because he was renting the house.

Photo: Barney Peterson / The Chronicle

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June 25, 1968: An article that ran after the sentencing of the Grateful Dead band members and friends who were charged with possession of marijuana.

June 25, 1968: An article that ran after the sentencing of the Grateful Dead band members and friends who were charged with possession of marijuana.

Photo: Chronicle archive

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June 23, 1968: Robert Matthews, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Rock Scully and Bob Weir at their sentencing. They paid either $100 or $200 and got probation in exchange for a guilty plea.

June 23, 1968: Robert Matthews, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Rock Scully and Bob Weir at their sentencing. They paid either $100 or $200 and got probation in exchange for a guilty plea.

Photo: Gordon Peters / The Chronicle

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Nov. 11, 1966: Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia and Ronald "Pig Pen" McKernan hang out at 710 Ashbury. I'm including this in anticipation of readers who wonder why I included no photos of Garcia.

Nov. 11, 1966: Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia and Ronald "Pig Pen" McKernan hang out at 710 Ashbury. I'm including this in anticipation of readers who wonder why I included no photos of Garcia.

Photo: Bob Campbell / The Chronicle

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Grateful Dead and the 710 Ashbury St. drug bust of 1967

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We have quite a few blind spots in the Chronicle photo morgue, and one of the biggest ones is the music files. The newspaper didn’t cover rock music very much to begin with in the 1960s, and at some point, several of the highest-profile negatives featuring high-profile bands and concerts were stolen, thrown away or borrowed and never returned.

(That’s the fate of our The Beatles/Candlestick Park negatives, which are no longer in the archive except for a couple of prints.)

So I was pretty thrilled to find our coverage of the Grateful Dead drug bust of 1967 almost entirely intact.

Eleven residents of 710 Ashbury St., including two band members, two managers and several women living with the band, were handcuffed together and hauled away by police on Oct. 2, 1967. San Francisco narcotics officers, who took more than a pound or marijuana and hashish from the residence, said they were working off a tip from an informant. Band lawyers said the group was unfairly targeted. The story made the front page of the Chronicle, a band press conference followed and most of the defendants pled guilty to lesser charges and paid a small fine the following year.

More thoughts after the Chronicle front page from 1967 …

* The headline makes it look like the Chronicle is picking on the band, but this was the newspaper’s style at the time — to choose a story each day and accompany it with a giant headline that most papers reserve for the end of a war or beginning of Jesus’ return. The original Dead story was well-reported and pretty fair toward the band. (Unlike two of the four follow-up articles, which poked fun at the Dead’s hippie roots.)

* My favorite non-Dead headline from the Oct. 2, 1967 Chronicle front page: “Supervisors Reject Second Deck,” a vote that ended a very serious and nearly successful attempt to give the Golden Gate Bridge a bottom deck which would have accommodated more auto traffic and also a train.

* Band members Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan were both arrested. Where were the other band members? From the Chronicle article: “O’Connor, the state narcotics chief, said he was not sure whether charges would be filed against three other members of the Dead not present at the pad — lead guitarist Jerry (Captain Trips) Garcia, 24; Phil Lesh, 27, bassist and song writer; and Bill Summers, 21, the drummer.” (No other band member was arrested, although they would be busted again in New Orleans in 1970, and Garcia was arrested for drug possession in New Jersey in 1973.)

* I’m by no means a Grateful Dead expert, and I realize there are readers who know a lot more about this arrest than I do. I look forward to more details emerging in the comments and in e-mails from fans.

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Photo: Gordon Peters/The Chronicle 1968

* I couldn’t find the photos from the Oct. 6 press conference at 710 Ashbury St., where media members were offered cookies and cake from the band, and co-manager Danny Rifkin read a two-page manifesto. The photo from the paper is included in the above gallery. I do have an excerpt from Rifkin’s speech that ran in the Chronicle. This was part of a two-page written speech on behalf of the band.

“Almost anyone who has ever studied marijuana seriously and objectively has agreed that, physically and psychologically, marijuana is the least harmful chemical used for pleasure and life enhancement. … The president of a company that makes defective automobiles which leads to thousands of deaths and injuries can face a maximum penalty or a minor fine.

“A person convicted for possession of marijuana can be sentenced to up to 30 years in jail … the law is so seriously out of touch with reality. If the lawyers, doctors, advertising men, teachers and political officeholders who use marijuana were arrested today, the law might well be off the books before Thanksgiving.

“Police prefer to concentrate on individuals who have been manufactured by the mass media into a group that typifies the now-popular image of the drug-oriented hippie. The mass media created the so-called hippie scene. This way, the American people are protected, by the police and the media, from the fact that the law is a lie.

“But the ‘hippie’ as created by the media is a lie as well … the law creates a mythical danger and calls it a felony. The result is a series of lies and myths that prop each other up. Behind all the myths is the reality. The Grateful Dead are people engaged in constructive, creative effort in the musical field and this house is where we work as well as out residence. Because the police fear and misinterpret us, our effort is now being interrupted as we deal with the consequences of an harassing arrest.”

* Originally charged with felonies, most of the defendants pled guilty to misdemeanors and paid a $100 or $200 fine. I think it’s noteworthy that after the slap on the wrist, the Dead enjoyed a strong relationship with the community. Just the following year, the SF Symphony hired the band to play its fundraising Black and White Ball. They became a staple singing Giants and 49ers game national anthems, and contributed to a lot of fundraising concerts for local causes. The Dead never shook the “hippie” label, but locals came to know the band as solid and patriotic citizens.

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He takes requests. Contact him at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter @peterhartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.